A bunch of guys yelling and screaming as loudly as they can while playing instruments as loud and as fast as they can. Another way to describe the music of “Emmure: Speaker of the Dead” is chaotic noise that is supposed to have a beat and meaning. I have no clue what so ever as to what the lyrics of any of the songs on “Speaker of the Dead” are. With all the screaming, growling, and loudness of it all I can’t understand what is being said. Though by some of the song titles I’m taking a wild guess that the band likes video games, comics, and old cartoons. One song is titled “Children of Cybertron”, which is the home planet of the “Transformers”, then there’s the song “My Name is Thanos”, a character from the Marvel Comics comics.

If it wasn’t for the names of these songs I wouldn’t have no way of trying to figure out the meaning of the song. Still, even with that I don’t have a good grasp on what it’s about. Sure “My Name is Thanos” tells me that they are talking about the character “Thanos” but what are they saying? Something good, something bad, do they like him, dislike him, or maybe they think this is something stupid? I just don’t know and that’s how it is with this whole CD.

Without knowing the meaning of any of the songs I had to go off of the sound of the songs. Well, that’s not too good. One thing ‘Emmure’ is not lacking, that’s energy. There’s so much energy put into these songs that it would be hard not to get some sort of reaction out of them. Even if that reaction is to get up to turn the music off, which is actually what I had to do the first time. I was not prepared for hearing the extreme levels of the songs on “Speaker of the Dead” and had to turn it off. Once I knew what I was getting into and I played it again, well I still wanted to turn it off again but I pushed through and listened.

What I heard was 15 songs that are just noise and lots of screaming. Fine there’s lots of energy being put into the songs, and at times I think the instruments sound good. It’s the vocals that just grate on my nerves. I don’t mind some screaming but at least make it semi understandable. It’s because of all the screaming, all that the vocals sound like is a deep throat clearing sound with instruments being played behind it. I didn’t enjoy listening at all and right now I can’t think of a time when I would want to play this CD.